Incomplete history, hypnotic filmmaking

TEENAGE is a documentary about those years between the onset of adolescence and adulthood. But throw away any preconceptions involving talking heads, child psychologists and he-said/she-said points of view.

Director Matt Wolf takes a dreamier, more impressionistic approach to the form, combining fascinating archival footage with contemporary re-creations overlayed with voiceovers by actors reading the words of young people from earlier eras.

Movie Review

Teenage

Directed by Matt Wolf

Cinematheque

78 minutes

PG

3 1/2 stars out of 5

Other voices

Deftly weaves together various media in a way that breathes its own youthful, stream-of-conscious life into the documentary genre.

-- Jen Chaney, Washington Post

There's no "there" there in Teenage, a meandering mess of a documentary that has the feel of a bloated, inchoate term paper.

-- Tom Keogh, Seattle Times

If Teenage delivers a sweeping generalization or two (or three)... Wolf's documentary makes up for it with footage that's just too good to be ignored.

-- Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

Based on Jon Savage's book Teenage: The Prehistory of Youth Culture 1875-1945, it chronicles the growth of a singular youth sensibility from the late 1800s -- when most went from play to hard work in less time than you can say "child labour" -- to the post-Second World War era where a growing leisure economy meant more people could enjoy the years between grade-school recreation and adult responsibility.

As history, Teenage is flawed. Much gets left out: The main focus is on white American, British and German youth, with a cursory nod to young blacks' contributions to jazz and swing dancing, as well as the discrimination young black men faced at home after serving in the world wars. Not only that, but Wolf is so adept at knitting together his re-creations with the real thing that it becomes hard to tell one from the other.

Yet, as filmmaking, Teenage is a hypnotic whirlwind of imagery, enhanced by the moody score by Bradford Cox of the band Deer Hunter. And Wolf does it without using the term "rock 'n' roll." For a film that's really a salute to the birth and growth of teenage rebellion, that in itself is an accomplishment.

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